


Spirits

by jurdanhell



Category: The Folk of the Air - Holly Black
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Come Cry With Me, F/M, QoN - Freeform, Queen of nothing - Freeform, anygays, but. a warning :), cardan x jude - Freeform, how the king of elfhame learned to hate stories, htkoelths, jarden, jude x cardan, jurdan - Freeform, lotta angst, tcp, testing my abilities to write and rewrite character death apparently, the cruel prince - Freeform, the king of elfhame, the queen of nothing, the wicked king, theres no permanent death, tkoe, tqon, twk, uhm. angst?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 18:40:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28586610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jurdanhell/pseuds/jurdanhell
Summary: if you could live forever, would you?
Relationships: Jude Duarte/Cardan Greenbriar
Comments: 2
Kudos: 35





	1. Heavy in December

Jude picked up her bedroll and tucked it beneath her arm. She cast a sideways glance to the Bomb and the Roach talking by the small fire they were supposed to be putting out. Their soft conversation flitting over to her, Lilliver’s gentle laugh singing through the air and over the calm crackle of the fire. She stepped over the remaining kindling from the fire they started the night prior, Jude tucked her bedroll into her pack, and did an about-face. 

She hadn’t gotten three steps before someone’s voice made her nearly jump out of her skin. Their voice was a deep rasp, something guttural and calm, floating to her on the wind. “ _I pity you,_ ” it said. She saw their eyes first, cold and cruel, like winter taken form. They sat unmoving beneath a half-dead tree. Silently scolding herself for not seeing anyone in their make-shift campsite, Jude felt for the handle of the dagger strapped to her side, clasping her fingers around it tightly. Her knuckles turned as white as the snow beneath her.

The person before her bore no sympathy that their words may have once portrayed. Their fingers frost-covered, their skin ice, voice colder than the snow around them. Jude wondered if they were cold. She had half a mind to end them where they sat. “Congratulations,” she said instead.

They hummed in amusement. “Queenly one, I have an offer for you.” Their voice was brittle, and old. Jude’s spine hummed, her feet urging her to scramble far, far away. They wore no glamour, did not even try to hide away from her, sat right within their campsite, unnoticed. _Run._ Jude’s feet stayed planted in the snow.

She straightened, one hand resting near her hip, the other silently slipping a dagger out of its sheath. “So do most folk.”

“Yes.” They smiled. It was all-too-many too-sharp teeth. Their smile split their face open like it’d been carved there. “They do,” they said, smile widening, “As do I.”

Jude unsheathed her small blade. Any blade was better than no blade, she decided. “I don’t want it. Whatever it is you’re about to offer me, I don’t want it. Save it for some other fool.”

“A mortal ruling immortals. How can you ever truly understand your subjects if you are not one to be like them? If you can never truly understand the way they live? To be one with them fully, to know the life of an immortal in its fullest?” The more they spoke, the more solid their voice became, no longer traveling to her like a flurry on the breeze.

“I don’t need to.”

“Don’t you? You don’t have the slightest idea of what you’re missing, to begin with. How else will you know what else you do not know? You did not even see me sitting here.”

Jude furrowed her eyebrows. “I-”

“I offer you this, young queen. A life of an immortal like no other. You would remain yourself in every sense, an immortal in its truest form, forgotten be of death to you. An immortally mortal Queen of Faerie.”

Jude’s voice caught in her throat. It was true that she hadn’t seen them, had never heard their footfalls, didn’t know they were sitting there. They could’ve killed her and she’d never have known anyone had breached their campsite until it was too late. What else had she been missing?

She coughed, melting away the words caught in her throat. “Why would you offer me that? You have no reason to.”

They smiled with their eyes this time. No kindness radiated from them beneath that blistering cold appearance. 

Jude narrowed her eyes. “What kind of immortality?”

“Ah,” was all they said for a long moment as they folded their hands in their lap. “An immortality like no other. You would truly be greater than any of the folk you rule over. It is an immortality fit for a queen.”

“ _What do you want in return?_ ” Jude’s voice was cold in her throat. It was a kind of cold that fed heat to her cheeks, would’ve burned the forest around them to the ground if it had been any warmer, a heat that reached her eyes, that radiated off of her in waves.

The faerie sitting in front of them cleared their throat softly. Jude made no show of hiding her dagger, the moonlight glinted off the blade and fueled the light of the snow. It sent both light and shadow dancing across her face. “Each time you die,” they started. Jude raised a brow. “One year of your life will be mine. For example, should you live to be eighty years and manage to only die once before then, you will live to be seventy-nine. Die twice, seventy-eight. Thrice, seventy-seven.

I’m going to imagine you can do the math from there, young one.”

“What do you want with my years?”

“Does it matter? They won’t be of any use to you, especially if you’re already dead.” This was a horrible idea.

* * *

Jude walked back to where the Bomb and the Roach were putting out the remnants of the fire, their small campsite depleted at their feet. A branch snapped in the distance and, weapons drawn, all three of their heads shot up in unison as they watched a deer wander into the small clearing. It nibbled against the frozen bark and sniffed at the ground. Then, as if suddenly noticing it wasn’t alone after all, darted off the direction it came, twisting around trees and bouncing off the snow like drops of blood.

With everything they’d had strewn out in their campsite compressed into their small packs, they wound their way through the trees. Soft conversation drifted to Jude, her mind still on the odd folk who’d offered her that deal. The one with the ice-covered skin, with the frost-covered eyes. She shivered. 

As the quiet settled back over them, masked only by the sound of their footsteps, Jude took a deep breath. “So,” she said.

An arrow shot past her ear and grazed the soft curve. The three spies ducked behind the trees for cover as another arrow shot past them, whistling against the cold. Jude lifted her fingers to her ear and recoiled at the sting, wincing softly. 

The Bomb lifted her crossbow and shot the archer half-hidden behind another tree several yards away. The arrow sang through the air, planting itself right between his eyes. They dropped into the snow and loosed the arrow they had drawn into the snow beneath them. Three more arrows dripped down from the trees, struck themselves at their feet. With a single, quick glance, they bolted.

Ditching the packs they carried onto the frozen ground, they braided themselves through the woods as quickly as their feet would let them. They raced against the bolts that made the trees shiver, that made the ground ache. Something in Jude flickered at the thought. The heat rushed back to her cheeks, the anger boiled under her skin, her rage a living thing. She should’ve said something sooner.

Jude slipped her own crossbow free from her belt and unsheathed an arrow from her quiver. Crossbow propped against her knee as she leaned back against a tree, she pulled back the string and placed the arrow along the groove. The bark dug into her back. A twig snapped to her right as she turned to meet an arrow lodging itself in the tree in front of her. Another archer stood several feet away from her, readying to loose another arrow. The world froze around her as she squeezed her trigger finger, watched the archer’s body swallow the fletchings along the arrow whole, and loaded another. Load, aim, release, repeat. The snow enveloped them entirely as each archer fell, their anchor in ice depleting with each arrow fired. 

The Bomb fired the final shot. Jude tried not to wince at the heavy sound of their body crunching the snow. They stayed as they were for a minute: sweat on their brows and weapons in hand, loaded. Jude watched her breath curl quietly in the air, it’s white mist disappearing along the bright sky. She listened as each snowflake met the snow on the ground, could feel every breath of the wind chasing the sky, ripping against her skin. Jude shivered again.

“Well,” Lilliver said, “that’s one way to make a point.” 

Jude huffed a laugh. “Let’s go,” she muttered.

The walk to the palace was considerably uneventful. Not a single archer, not one animal nor their tracks. It was quiet. Awfully so, Jude decided. 

The palace, however, was in sight ahead and she was aching to see Cardan again. It wasn’t that she’d been gone long, and it wasn’t not that she missed him. She wanted him to be the first to know about it, if she had any say in the matter. If she had a choice, Cardan would know about her deal first. 

He probably wouldn’t be happy about it, her striking a bargain. But it was none of his business. What she did with herself was up to her. He’d learn to live with it, especially now that she needn’t worry about death like any other mortal. It’d be fine. He’d get over it eventually. And now she’d have the time to see it, in all of her immortally mortal life.

Jude stepped into the palace gardens, fingers wrapping around the closed bud of a rose. It bloomed in her palm, it’s fragrance a hefty perfume among the rest of the garden. “Jude.”

Cardan stepped into view in front of his wife. He leaned over the bush between them and pressed a kiss to her temple. She looked up at him, her face revealing none of the secrets she held, and smiled something bright. Cardan thought it could crush the stars.

He pressed his lips against hers. She tasted like Jude; like starlight and heaven colliding, like the warmth of a hearth fighting the cold. Jude tasted like home. 

Cardan walked around the bushes to wrap himself around her again. She was safe.

There was a whistle, and a shout. Jude gasped softly as her hand flew to her stomach. Cardan’s brows furrowed as Jude collapsed into his arms. The point of an arrow threatened to tear through his clothes, eating away at his skin. His white, flowy shirt stained red, Jude a mess of gasps and pants against his chests.

Cardan shouted. He shouted until his voice was raw, until the gods above and below heard the ache in his voice, his desperation. Until the trees withered away with age and the flowers compressed to ash beneath him. He was being cleaved apart.

Jude placed a hand to his cheek, her mouth open, her words smothered and strangled by the death that held her throat. Cardan might have thought she was trying to tell him that she loved him. He screamed again.   
The nurses’ footsteps echoed down the hall. The Bomb was telling him something about the arrow protruding from her stomach, he thought. She broke the tip off and tied a knot of fabric around her chest, pulling it tight, before slipping the shaft of the arrow out from behind her. 

Jude lay on the cold ground, its empty ache a mirror to her own. Rain pattered against her cheeks in thick droplets. They rolled down her skin in a melancholy embrace. The darkness devoured her, ensorcelled her with its cool relief against the hot agony veining from her center. Jude had no want left in the world other than the calmly quiet that the darkness provided; its feverish cling heavy like molasses. She wanted Cardan to hold her again. 

Jude shot up from where she lay on the withered ground, her clothing littered with flowers and stained with what looked like ink and smelled deeply of iron. There was no ache, no pain. No arrow wound gaping through her, gouging out her stomach, causing Cardan’s true ruination. Another archer lay dead on the ground.

* * *

Jude stripped off her shirt and tossed it to the ground, giving herself a quick once over in the mirror, realizing slowly that there wasn’t so much as a scar in place of the arrow she’d taken in the gardens. There was never even proof that it was there. But it was. She knew it was. She knew, if for no reason other than the way the medics looked at her as she passed them. The way Van and Lilliver gave her an unsteady look, a look that was nothing short of bewilderment. The way Cardan looked at her. He looked afraid. Shaken, fairly so. But afraid. Afraid of her.

His hands brushed her hair to one side of her neck, he pressed a chaste kiss to the cool skin that was once beneath, wrapping his arms around his waist. Jude leaned into the touch and Cardan flipped her so she was facing him. He hadn’t been soaked in the rain, and strangely, neither had she beyond those few droplets against her face. He pressed her to the wall and cupped her face in his hands. Jude looked up at him for the first time since she’d taken an arrow to the belly, swiped a stray tear from his cheek. “I’m okay.” 

It was his undoing, those small words. Cardan collapsed into himself, letting himself feel every once of what had been built in short the time she’d spent away with him, and the time after. Jude wrapped her arms around his middle. She wasn’t sure how long they’d stayed like that, nearly keeping herself together and pressed up against the wall, holding Cardan to her, stroking her hands through his hair.

He looked to her again, eyes rimmed red in fatigue, in anguish, and rested his forehead against hers gently. So, so gently, as if he pressed himself against her too tightly she’d blow away like smoke on the wind. 

“ _How?_ ” It’s the first thing he’s said to her, the first thing he could manage. His lip wobbled anyways.

Jude took a deep breath, steeling herself before she had a chance to talk herself out of it. Before something else came up.

“I may have made a deal.”


	2. Bitter Lies the Cold;

“May have, or did?” Cardan asked, his voice carefully neutral. 

Jude paused, not entirely sure she wanted to answer. 

He’d be able to tell if she was lying, anyways. He always could. Jude hated that, sometimes. “May have did.”

Slowly, she explains her venture with the folk with ice clinging to their skin, about how their voice had sounded more brittle than the dry winds of the wood, about the year that she’d lost what felt both like hours and moments ago. About how it had saved her life, and if she hadn’t have made that deal, she wouldn’t’ve been able to hold Cardan’s hand right now. How he couldn’t have clung to her like this, as she sat and breathed the same chilled air that he did.

It still seemed so surreal. 

She remembered the smell of the roses from the gardens, Cardan’s fingers on her cheek. She remembered the words she tried to choke out, that it was _fine._ That she was _fine_ and _everything was okay._ But none of this felt okay. the sense of wrongness that crept up her spine refused to let her believe otherwise. She felt like her existence defied logic in that moment, how she’d sat up like nothing happened, like she looked up from a book she’d escaped into and had slipped back into the real world.

She remembered Cardan’s screams, even as her memory fogged and something dragged her under the spell of sleep. She remembered the taste of his name on her tongue, how she’d tried to tell him it was okay.   
But if she’d seen how she’d looked, she wouldn’t have believed her either.

They sat in their rooms for a moment, tucked into each other, pretending that no one had just died, because no one had, and that everything was fine, because it was. 

Everything was fine.

Cardan had disappeared down the hall to tell the Court of Shadows exactly what they had witnessed, even if he wasn’t sure himself. He’d explained what he could, out of order, and told most of the story with his head in his hands. 

When he finished, he was met with a silence so drastically pure that he was certain there was something terribly, awfully wrong. Nevermind the fact that Jude had lived, it was suddenly as if something in the air had shifted, as if there was an army on the horizon so big that fleeing from your village wouldn’t do you any good. 

Cardan felt very, very small.

The Bomb spoke first, her voice small, but not quiet. “Even if making that bargain was a terrible idea, it did save her life, just this once.”

“And who knows how many other times that we didn’t even see,” the Roach added. 

Cardan nodded, feeling out of his body as he sunk into himself. He wasn’t sure how he’d made it back to their rooms, nor when, but it was like his mind had been laced with a hell-wrought drug. Maybe it had, with the way worry clung to his mind and slithered under his skin. Cardan felt sick. 

He sat curled in Jude’s arms as they lay above the covers on their bed, his hands playing with the hem of her dress as she wove small braids into his hair. “Please?” He asked again, quietly. He wouldn’t let this go, not this time.  
Even if it wasn’t his decision. 

“Cardan,” Jude said, ready to repeat what she told him the first three times he’d asked. 

He’d stopped her before she could speak again, turning over in her lap and weaving his fingers between her own. “This doesn’t feel right, and you know it.”

Jude looked out the window, and glanced around the room before she could make herself look into his eyes again. 

And when she did, she could see every emotion there that had scraped his throat raw only a few hours earlier. 

They fell asleep that night curled into the thought of loss as wrongness wrapped its hands around their throats and squeezed.

* * *

Jude’s breath had stopped in her sleep that night. She’d gone so still and pale Cardan wasn’t sure if she’d wake back up that time. The seconds between her next breath passed like hours, and he’d wailed her name so loudly that even the moon had heard it’s enchantment. 

The pale scar in the sky wept for her that night, having slipped into the shadows and hidden her face from view. She shrouded her face behind that veil of shadow and darkness, and cast away the hearing of the young lover’s cry to the gods. 

Another few hours passed before Cardan could process thoughts again, before he could will himself to speak or think. And his wife had gone off to practice swordplay.

They were using the wooden swords that were usually reserved for children, and though Jude felt extremely childish, she granted her husband the small request as he’d asked her with tears in his eyes, his voice raw from tears and screams. She knew that it had bothered him, how the paths before them were unfolding. She wasn’t ready to admit that it had bothered her, too. That something was crawling under her skin and that she was feeling the heady wine of regret sing through her blood. 

Jude crossed her practice sword with the Ghost, the hollow sound of the wooden swords knocking into each other filling the training room the Court of Shadows used. 

Truthfully, it had happened so quickly that Jude hadn’t even processed it. Her chest ached, and she thought someone might’ve yelled something. And the next thing she knew, she was sitting up on the floor, practice sword in hand, covered in blood. It was hers, and the only reason she knew was because of the flowers that still bloomed, their perfume battling the iron that shoved itself up her nose. 

But she bore no scar nor possessed no wound, and she was fine; fine, because she could stand and swing her sword over her head, and she was fine. 

She was half tempted to ask the Ghost not to tell Cardan, because the less he knew of this venture, the better. She’d hurt him enough today already. She didn’t want to watch him crumble into her again. And yet, she wanted to lie to him even less, as strange and new as that feeling was.

* * *

The next morning, Jude woke with her head on Cardan’s chest, her legs wrapped around one of his own. The late afternoon sunlight poured in through the window across the room.

She tilted her head up from where she lie to look at him. To see how his brows had drawn together in his sleep, how he’d held her to him as if she’d vanish from his arms, as if she’d blow away on the next strong wind. 

Jude nuzzled into Cardan’s neck, listening to the soft sounds of his breathing as she was lulled back to sleep. 

When she awoke again, their breakfast had been brought to their bedside. She picked up tea that had been poured out for her the way she liked. Jude gave Cardan a look. It was a look that Cardan interpreted as: _You can’t actually be serious._

He shot her one right back. You _can’t actually be serious._ He might’ve felt a little bad about it, if it weren’t for the way she choked on her tea. For the way she sputtered and coughed.

Cardan was at her side quicker than Jude realized was possible, holding her to him and still somehow trying to give her room to breathe. Neither of them knew what to do. Cardan started to yell for someone before his voice caught in his throat. 

His voice disappeared as quick as he had drawn it, his volume rendered to a mere whisper as his Jude slumped into his arms and went very, very still. 

Jude dreamt of the archer that shot her that night in the palace gardens. She dreamt of the odd shape of his longbow, of his dull eyes, of his rounded ears. 

Jude stirred on Cardan’s shoulder, waking to the feel of his silent sobs that wracked the both of their bodies. Jude’s shoulder was wet with tears that weren’t hers.

She ran a hand up his spine, feeling the length of his back, telling him that she was right there. They sat there like that for a while, silent and careful. Not wanting to move and disturb any semblance of peace that had blanketed itself upon them. 

It was a quiet thing, something forged of broken bones and glass. It crunched beneath their feet all the same. 

When he found the strength to speak again, he whispered into her neck. _Please._ It’s not a question anymore. It stopped being a question before he’d even asked it.

It stopped being a question when that archer had plunged his arrow into her stomach. Maybe even before then. 

_I’m sorry_. Jude wasn’t sure if she imagined him speaking, let alone the words he whispered into her neck. Cardan wondered briefly if his throat might be bleeding. “I’m sorry, Jude. I’m sorry that you didn’t feel safe enough here. I’m sorry that you felt you needed more protection than what I could offer you. Than what you could’ve given yourself.”

She felt herself shrug into him. “It doesn’t matter. None of it matters.” She felt Cardan shift, felt him brush a strand of hair behind her ear. Briefly she thought him trying to speak again, but continued before he got the chance. “I’m mortal. It doesn’t matter.”

All at once, Cardan is sad, and furious, and angry. He wants to sob into her shoulder and shriek at the gods. He wants to scream at the gods-damned faerie that had ever dared offer her this grief, let alone granted it. He wants to be the personal end of every creature that dared make her feel like she did right now, even if that list included himself. 

Jude was angry, too. Angry at that strange faerie whose skin clung to the frost. Angry at this world. But mostly, Jude was angry at herself. 

Maybe it took her seeing him like this, bent over her, sickly and broken atop her, still shielding her with his own body, hands clawing at the fabric that separated them and made no move to remove it. She was disgusted with herself.

Jude brought her nose to the crook of his neck. “I’m mortal,” she said again. “There’s no true way I’d be able to understand the folk and their immortality unless I. . .” she trailed off. She was fumbling for an excuse at best, making one up at worse. It was a half-assed attempt at saving her pride, and a pathetic one at that. 

Cardan moved away from her, put just enough space in between them so that he could look at her properly. There was a special kind of horror in his eyes, something that she might’ve killed to see not too entirely long ago. Somehow, that felt like a lifetime. There was revulsion in every line of his face, and when she looked at him, there was a kind of intensity that she’d forgotten how to feel every time she looked away. 

Slowly, he spoke so slowly and so quietly Jude was half sure that this wasn’t even real. She felt like she was still dreaming, even though it felt much more like a nightmare. He told her that as long as she stayed in Faerie, she wouldn’t age. She would be immortal in a similar sense, that as long as she stayed, she would be safe. And he told her the part about her leaving, too. That the moment she left, her years would catch up with her.

Jude felt both wondrous and sick all at once. This was brilliant, and ridiculous. It wouldn’t be the same. It would never be the same, but it had to be a better alternative. She certainly couldn’t just sit and wait around for the rest of her years to catch up with her. She couldn’t just keep dying, watching as Cardan slipped further away from her each time. She couldn’t do that to herself, and she certainly couldn’t do that to him.

_Please._

“Everyone always said that mortal’s lives were short and meaningless, that--” 

“I don’t think anyone actually imagined you’d stay in Faerie. You’re safe as long as you’re here. It might even be different still, with you as its ruler.” Cardan said, nuzzling back into her neck. _I’m so sorry._

Fat tears rolled down her cheeks. It was so, so utterly stupid. All of it. The bargain, the stupid rules. Every bit. 

Jude took a deep breath, resting her chin on Cardan’s shoulder. “Okay,” she said, her voice soft. “Okay.”

“Okay. . . what?” Cardan asked, not daring to remove himself from her embrace.

Jude wrapped her arms around his middle. “Let’s find a way out of this.”

* * *

The Court of Shadows is huddled around a table in the royal library, books spread out haphazardly, when there’s a loud thud that shakes the ground. 

A book tumbles its way into an isle in view from the table, as Jude’s hand lay limp against the cold floor. The room is quiet as they lift the heavy book case off her, the wounds already healed as they slide her out from underneath. 

Jude is stiff as they read at the table, her body aching with sleep. She yawns for the third time in ten minutes before someone speaks again. She isn’t sure what is said. 

Dawn peeks across the horizon in brilliant shades of red and orange, the stars fleeing from the light and the shadows banished, even as something heavier grows. 

“How are we no where closer to solving this, to finding anything?” Someone asks. Jude isn’t sure who. Her head is rested on Cardan’s shoulder, and no one will let her stand to go anywhere. Cardan would sooner carry her, and Jude’s pride was too prominent, even with as tired as she was, to resort to being carried. She’d sooner die.

She laughed to herself. No one gave it much mind. 

“There was that story I told you about the other day,” someone suggested. It sounded like the Bomb.

Cardan interrupted. She’d know his voice anywhere. “What story?”

There was a silence between the words that followed, as if whoever it was was contemplating whether or not it was actually worth it to share. Or many they were just laughing at the strangeness of it all. Jude couldn’t blame them.

“It’s not much,” they said finally. “Just an old tale that was used to scare children into a reasonable bedtime.”

Cardan was quiet then, probably beckoning them to continue. 

“Someone who made odd deals that no other folk could, a monster banished to live the rest of their immortal life away from the living, trapped beneath the ice.”

Jude’s foggy thoughts drifted back to the strange faerie with ice frozen over their skin, how their voice was colder than the snow and older than the trees. It was like their skin was made out of living frost and— 

“That _bitch._ ”

**Author's Note:**

> i. i like the outline of this fic so much & i’m v proud of it but please show it some love, i’m anxious lmao


End file.
